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Famed hardware hacker Bunnie Huang announces his newest project and goes into detail about how trouble from the DMCA was the impetus. He comments that unchecked power to license freedom of expression should not be trusted to corporate interests. The project, NeTV2, is being crowdfunded.
I'd like to share a project I'm working on that could have an impact on your future freedoms in the digital age. It's an open video development board I call NeTV2.
It's related to a lawsuit I've filed with the help of the EFF against the US government to reform Section 1201 of the DMCA. Currently, Section 1201 imbues media cartels with nearly unchecked power to prevent us from innovating and expressing ourselves, thus restricting our right to free speech.
At Boing Boing : Innovation should be legal; that's why I'm launching NeTV2
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday May 14 2018, @05:23PM (5 children)
The point is just design your product to overlay on an unprotected signal and expect people with a clue to "know" how to use it with protected content on the down low. As long as you aren't uploading HBO content to bittorrent nobody is likely to bother you. DRM is just to stop idiots from making copies and annoy the paying customers with senseless restrictions and random incompatibilities. And stop me from watching DVDs or BDs on my Linux box. Yea libdvdcss is available if you know where to look. That part works just fine but try sticking a dozen random DVDs in and expect the menus to work? DVDs are so old the patents are expired and they still don't play reliably. Rip? Oh that isn't a problem if you just want the main feature dumped into a file. It is using one like it was intended that is the problem, usually because of the infernal copy protection. Not holding my breath for BD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @06:09PM (3 children)
In the case of video, DRM has nothing whatsoever to do with preventing copying, and everything to do with enabling studios to collect royalties from equipment manufacturers, which they would otherwise have no ability to do so.
Take movies for example. A small number of companies produce most of the movies. This puts them in a position to collaborate on a DRM scheme. By ensuring that all their movies have DRM, these companies get to set the rules for all the playback equipment—these rules include a "protect^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlicensing fee" from the manufacturers. Anyone who makes playback equipment and does not play by the rules simply can't play the latest movies and that equipment inevitably fails in the market. This DRM has legal teeth because of the DMCA and similar laws elsewhere in the world, making it illegal to sell (in many countries) if you circumvent the DRM scheme.
Controlling the playback equipment enables these companies enforce their rules on downstream equipment vendors (such as television manufacturers) as well, in basically the same manner ("That's a nice TV you're making. It'd be a shame if your customers couldn't watch our movies with it...").
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @06:44PM (2 children)
Yep, reminds me of the many times I've heard complaints from people buying a new movie and getting pissed they can't play it because their DVD player is 5+ years old.
We should just keep pirating as a socially shameful thing, although there are edge cases that I find extremely acceptable. Play testing a game since demos are no longer a thing mostly, previewing media, accessing media that made easily available (region restrictions etc.)
I'm sure many people would take issue with what I find acceptable, but the main point is that DRM punishes the legitimate users and makes the world a worse place. Relying on people to be 90% decent folks who will pay when they can is infinitely preferable to the police state mentality we've got going on now.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday May 15 2018, @04:42AM (1 child)
Copying is socially shameful? That's the "funny" part of the DMCA. I can't think of any natural person who considers personal copying to be actually shameful.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday May 16 2018, @10:56AM
The irony is that it's thanks to DRM and DMCA restrictions manifesting themselves in totally unacceptable ways, such as the above mentioned 5 year old DVD player being unable to play a new release, that people now feel copying is not shameful. Most people, when confronted with the necessity to buy a new DVD player just to see some DRMed-to-the-max new DVD release, when their current player works perfectly fine, are going to download a pirate copy instead.
Many took it a step further and abandoned optical media. That's what I did. I never upgraded from DVD to Blu-Ray, and now I see no reason to bother much with either, not with the likes of YouTube and Netflix streaming 1080p content.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday May 14 2018, @07:41PM
No, the point is:
Not sell a product that does something vaguely related. Not sell a product that lets some hacker create a one-off prototype. Sell an actual goddamn product that actually, intentionally decrypts a signal as part of its core functionality. That's how you force it to be legal. One guy making gin in his bathtub would never have overthrown prohibition. It had to become a pretty common occurrence. It had to become widespread enough that arresting everyone involved was obviously impossible.
It's ALREADY legal to use that decrypted signal for plenty of reasons, it's just not legal to GET it, and they use that fact to take away the rights that we already have. That's a big part of why fair use is dying, and once it's impossible in practice it's going to be a piece of cake to ban it in law as well because nobody will care anymore. So we need people to be able to legally and openly sell products which allow you to do things that you are already legally allowed to do. If it's only a few "hardcore hackers" that are exploiting some bug or undocumented feature who are doing it...well, the media just has to say that phrase and 80% of the country will be in favor of banning whatever it is or locking up whoever is publicly doing it, simply because it's a "hacker" tool. If you can get a court to look at a specific product which gives a pretty broad range of functionality and give a blanket declaration that it is legal, or legal when used to circumvent DRM for a legitimate purpose, then that opens up entire new markets. And it reduces the need for every hacker to reinvent the wheel or import sketchy grey market goods just to play a goddamn video.